The Singles Jukebox

Hello Jukebox readers everywhere,

We have loved being back this year and covering new music from Jack Harlow to Sevdaliza to Lady Gaga. Thank you for reading!

Since it’s the end of the year, we are going to have our annual Amnesty Week soon, where individual writers can pick songs for us to cover. As part of being back, we’re also going to return to an old tradition we last did in 2020. We want to write about your favourite songs of the year that we missed too! Anything released as a single in 2024 is eligible.

Please email your suggestions to thesinglesjukebox@googlemail.com with Readers’ Week 2024 as the subject. The deadline is the end of Friday 6 December. We will then pick some to write about. Feel free to send a blurb and score with your submission if you’d like, too!

Looking forward to hearing from you!

1 blerg » Sunday, December 1st, 2024 3:48 pm

Our (slightly belated) November lineup goes big, and now goes home. Stay tuned for info on Amnesty Week and readers’ picks!

[Video]
[6.29]

Holly Boson: Gaga’s reign as Mother Monster wasn’t cut short by the enervating blare of Born This Way‘s production but by her physical health forcing her to cancel tours. I honestly thought the classic rock and traditional pop had taken her from us. “Disease” is the purest example of a “no, back to the old sound for REAL this time” single in a year with several prominent examples (Eminem’s was a self-loathing, high-concept parody of such singles; Katy’s was a perfect gigaflop that scientists will be modelling for centuries). It’s doing Nine Inch Nails, but it’s surprisingly fresh — not smarmy and arch like with Ashley O, if you remember that — and the Middle Eastern blending of major and minor is how big campy melodrama has queercoded itself in recent years, as in “Padam Padam” and “Unholy.” But obviously the highlight is Gaga’s voice, which stays mostly on the leash for a verse and chorus before transforming in the middle eight to a British-comedian lisp building to a repulsive puke; while most pop singers are good vocalists, you can only be a great vocalist if you do things nobody else would even think are worth doing. The lyrics allude, I guess, to her finally getting back to where she was before the lupus and bringing us with her, but they’re the only thing that sounds outdated here; that lyrical style that seemed sarcastic-deep in the inane lyrical world of late-’00s pop seems a bit plain next to the Taylors and SabCarps. But if you wanted to hear Gaga sing great, profound lyrics, you’d be listening to her version of “That’s Life” on that Joker 2 album, and there’s a reason you’re listening to this instead.
[9]

Harlan Talib Ockey: I too got really into Nine Inch Nails this summer.
[3]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Why split time promoting that cursed surprise musical Joker movie, the barely lived Harlequin companion album, and milquetoast Bruno Mars Grammy-bait when this was waiting in the wings the whole time? One has to wonder if it speaks to a lack of faith in her label in putting all their eggs in one basket, to wanting to avoid a crowded 2024 pop release schedule, or to Gaga’s propensity for wanting to be everything to everyone. It’s a shame because “Disease” is classic Gaga—she’s literally written this song before—a chimera of hooks, theatricality, and life-or-death stakes delivered with 110% commitment.
[7]

Leah Isobel: Chromatica might as well have been called The Fame Ruined My Fucking Life And I Hate Myself . One song has the line “You love the ‘Paparazzi,’ love The Fame / Even though you know it causes me pain,” another has the line “The [little] monster inside you is torturing me,” and the album-length narrative is about struggling and possibly failing to relocate the creative spark that animated her early career. Yet so much of its press cycle received it as Gaga Is Back We Love Pop Music. So what is a once era-defining popstar, trapped in the recursive prison of fame in which everyone expects her to remain frozen in time, supposed to do? “Disease” suggests that the answer is to turn her rage outward. The spooky-ooky production recalls some of Gaga’s best songs and adds in a few hilarious, campy shrieks for good measure. But by design, it lacks the vertiginous thrill that defined her old work. The overall feeling is one of constriction, as she builds up more and more energy within a tighter and tighter space. When she sings “You’re so tortured when you sleep / Plagued with all your memories” through gritted teeth, it’s both projection and reformulation, reframing the Chromatica problem as one of audience expectation and nostalgia rather than one of her potential inability to live up to past glories. And I mean, Girl With No Face is my current album of the year, so I’m pretty sympathetic to a diva telling her fans to fuck off. But past that delightful spikiness, there isn’t a lot of substance to grab onto here, with one of her more pedestrian-feeling choruses and a disappointing nothing of a bridge. Even if she livens it up with one of her best vocal performances and a final minute that absolutely pops off, it feels a little Gaga-by-committee, sanding down the abrasive edges to fit everything into yet another return-to-form narrative. Gaga’s career is fueled and defined by contradiction and tension — between men and women, art and pop, the artist and the public. But at a certain point, her conflicting impulses cancel each other out.
[5]

Taylor Alatorre: Rattling around in my brain for the past decade and change has been that 2011 Slate article about Lady Gaga embodying a kind of musical conservatism. To which I say, in a louder and more assured tone than I did back then: yeah, so? Whatever issues one might take with her pretenses to radicalism or her drama club appeal, the recycling of old forms did not begin or end with Gaga, and in fact is a healthier impulse in pop than the remorseless demands from some corners for constant, album-after-album reinvention. The fog of Top 40’s maximalist era having cleared, we can now see that her cobbling together of references and postures ended up birthing a distinct and novel persona that can now be used as a reference point by others — even by the artist herself, Gaga doing Gaga. I wish that “Disease” had set its sights higher than mere memory activation; the “playing it safe” aspect of her hidden conservatism is much in evidence here. But she’s working from a strong template, and even if it’s a distillation of her stronger stuff, she still sings it like it’s top-shelf material, like it’s all new to her even if it isn’t to us.
[6]

Katherine St. Asaph: Born This Way is among the most sonically and emotionally urgent pop albums of the 2010s; but while in 2011 it was inescapable, in 2024 it is underrated. Pitchfork’s 10-year retrospective is an exception, one of the few pieces of writing that truly understands it: “[Gaga] sings like she’s making a blood pact…. she often sounds like she has gazed into the depths of hell and is back to tell the tale.” I suspect that’s because because Born This Way is only half a great album, and the title track is not in that half. The album was also accompanied by tabloidy extramusical sidequests — anyone remember Jo Calderone? Lüc Carl? — that, in retrospect, might have pulled the album away from canon via their black hole of forgettability. But I will defend the throbbing electro triptych of “Heavy Metal Lover,” “Government Hooker,” and “Bloody Mary” with my life. And history has vindicated that — the kids made “Bloody Mary” a TikTok trend, and that album track now has more Spotify streams than actual singles “The Edge of Glory” and “You and I” combined. The public wants this — more, at least, than they want renditions of “When the Saints Come Marching In.” Maybe Gaga understands that, too; Chromatica revisited Born This Way‘s trauma, and here she revisits its sound. “Disease” does not match the aforementioned holy trinity, but it does match the unholy (non-pejorative) “Judas.” She does for Munchausen’s-by-proxy what she did for the OG betrayer — namely, way too fucking much. I’m not convinced this single is objectively good — it shares the blackpilled edgelord vibe of Suicide Squad (clearly she chose the wrong DC film), the fuck-it-zero-filter vibe of Camila Cabello’s “I LUV IT,” and the intangible vibe of Amy Lee’s “Push the Button.” But subjectively, to me? It’s exactly what I want Lady Gaga’s music to be. And she’s still a better singer than most pop artists working now.
[7]

TA Inskeep: What I want from Gaga is precisely a weirdo return to her The Fame Monster / Born This Way-era robotic pop, complete with a video that plays like it was made by art-damaged art students. Gaga at her musical best is the pop diva as freak-a-zoid, and she nails that here. 
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: AND THEY REMEMBERED TO LAYER SNARES! The ad-libs are clumsily added and often drowned by the bass synths and lead vocal, feeling both vestigial and flimsy. The mix falls flat, especially during the supposedly open, airy final chorus — the backgrounds are so pushed to the back that they can’t take hold once the bass comes in to steamroller them, and they flail during the outro like the wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man. BUT THEY REMEMBERED TO LAYER SNARES!!
[8]

Alfred Soto: The arena-level overstatement feels like watching clips of a Olympics game from 1984, but in times like these it’s cheering to listen to Gaga wail at the plants, cars, incels, influencers, and MAGA voters, many of whom like her music too. Despite naff lyrics, “Disease” echoes the sturdiest Born This Way tracks without serving as a reprise.
[7]

Mark Sinker: “If you were a sinner I could make you believe”: this is a curious line. Self-identified sinners already believe, that’s the point! And there’s a reason Clive Barker seems dated where Hitchcock doesn’t. For the latter the reversal — evil be thou my good — is a genuine temptation and not just a semiotic play of surfaces; it’s desire whispering crisscross at someone who needs out of a hated bind, because don’t they deserve to be? Except the way out is actually a way deeper in: for believers there’s something real at stake. The threat is so much stickier. I don’t hate Gaga’s pop-plasticky moral cosmology, where the night-people are mostly secretly nice people in goblin masks. Sometimes it’s fun! Sometimes it has a solid hooky melody, and sometimes her singing hops up a level, beyond its routine storytelling mode. But the dark is also real. 
[6]

Jel Bugle: Guy on the Radio 1 chart show just called it experimental — maybe in the sense of a high school science class. It’s a bit don’t bore us, get to the chorus. Good that Lady Gaga is doing the pop music thing again, but I feel that in some ways her mystique has been broken by her film stardom, and she has gone beyond popstardom. She’ll never be able to recapture former glories.
[7]

Al Varela: I’m not convinced that Lady Gaga still enjoys making pop music. Like “Stupid Love” before it, “Disease” has all the ingredients of a classic Gaga song, but the cooking method is all wrong. The production blasts so loudly in the mix in a way that technically envokes the bombast of the Born This Way era, but with none of the rigid tightness that kept that album’s best moments from going off the edge. Gaga’s snarling and yelling are impressive, but they don’t cut through the unbearable noise. Honestly, this is just as hollow of an imitation of former glory as “Woman’s World.”
[2]

Jackie Powell: The response to “Disease” speaks to the high standard that Gaga is held to. Stans and music writers reveled in its dark pulsating beats, feral screams, catchy anaphora in the pre-chorus (the ah-ahs) and the bombastic chorus that showcases Mother Monster’s vocal breadth, but some also realized that “Disease” was a track born out of fanservice. DJ Louie XIV of the Pop Pantheon Podcast recognized this immediately, especially given how “Bloody Mary” revived her fan base by accident after its success on TikTok. Rather than reinvent herself, Gaga went for what had worked during her peak — much as her peer Katy Perry did earlier this year, though “Disease” is a much better song than “Woman’s World.” The story it tells is simple but is in direct response and in opposition to Chromatica. Four years ago, Gaga’s messaging was about escaping darkness when it rages inside. “Disease” shows a willingness to accept it, and there’s an earnestness to the theatrics Gaga delivers in her vocal performance and the music video. Despite the single’s struggles to hit mainstream airways and prove that Gaga can still manufacture a hit without a collaborator, what’s refreshing about “Disease” is how it symbolizes autonomy. Sure, it sounds like nothing that’s currently on the radio and as a result hasn’t had the success of “Die With a Smile,” a song I absolutely rated too high in September. But lead singles mean a lot less in 2024 than they did 10 years ago. Let’s not call this new era over before it’s even truly started. 
[7]

Will Adams: Gaga’s always going to be Doing A Lot. When that manifests as bombastic renditions of jazz standards or doing press junkets that suggest the process of acting is the emotional equivalent of medieval torture, it’s exhausting. But when it manifests as the gargantuan electro of Born This Way (though what “Disease” sounds most like to me is Rezz) and larger-than-life vocals, it rules.
[7]

1 blerg » Monday, November 11th, 2024 10:43 pm

Stuck in them 20-somethings…

[Video]
[5.89]

Will Adams: For last year’s Amnesty Special/The Prodigal Return of the Jukebox, we covered a similarly titled song that also reflected on the woes of being midway through your 20’s. I feel mostly the same about Rod Wave’s take: I sympathize with the sentiment, but my (slightly) older age adds a layer of naiveté to it. Docking an extra point for reminding me that I’d rather be listening to “Love Me Jeje.”
[5]

Nortey Dowuona: This samples “Love Me Jeje,” so it gets a [10] on principle. We can’t go above that, so just add another [10] to my previous score. Shoutout to a real black star.
[10]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Unfortunately, this isn’t bad enough to get me to do a self-righteous anti-sampling defence of a song that literally came out six months ago. Rod Wave continues to be more interesting in theory than in practice — for this to rise above the level of light curiousity I need a deeper sadness, some grandiose emotions rather than just tuneful wallowing. This is a good tuneful wallow, though!   
[6]

Dave Moore: Conversational R&B with several more coats of schmaltz than is strictly necessary — especially given he spends the intro mumbling like a misanthrope. Tonally it’s all over the map — he steadfastly offers his shoulder to cry on immediately after observing that the “dating pool is fucked.” Love you, too, baby. 
[4]

Taylor Alatorre: “The dating pool is fucked” fits the criterion of embarrassment used by Biblical scholars — no man would dare put something that corny on record unless it really meant something to him. And while that specific sentiment doesn’t strike at me, the diaristic impulse to debase oneself through ruthless self-disclosure always will. If the lack of a chorus in “25” seems like formlessness, then it’s an accurate representation of the years being reeled in — linear time is not forgiving enough to be lived in ABAB form.
[7]

Ian Mathers: So the slight structural weirdness of “Cold December” wasn’t a one-off, I guess. Production is still nicely appointed but as much as I appreciate Wave sounding like he needs to process some stuff, it doesn’t make for a compelling song. Especially when it feels like the track cuts off just before he digs into something more meaningful than “some shit don’t excite me no more.”
[4]

Mark Sinker: Age-counting songs allow you to summarise a sequence of moments with a little run of inventively pithy lines or anecdotes! Rod flubs this totally: cookiecutter for 21 and 22, two-years-one-thought for 23 and 24, then back to cookiecutter (except ironic). This is the model for the whole song: every device a missed opportunity. He has a nice voice and the ebb and flow with the backing singer is pleasant.
[4]

Katherine St. Asaph: It is much easier than I thought to turn “Love Me Jeje” into ’90s ballad mush.
[4]

Al Varela: The soft twinkle of the piano against the tap of the snares as pitched-up Tems croons across star-laden background is an easy way to win me over. Just off the production alone, I’m transported to a melancholic, nostalgic state of bliss. Rod Wave reaches the quarter point of his life, and he feels stuck in a limbo of disillusionment and uncertainty. The excitement of his early 20s is fading away, and he grapples with the idea that maybe he’s getting old, growing tired. There’s certainly a lot of life left to go, but speaking as someone who is also 25 as of writing this, you feel that shift. It’s a shift that you aren’t excited about… but you’re not scared of it either. Life simply continues. 
[9]

no blergs » Monday, November 11th, 2024 7:00 pm

Our 2023 champion still fares well…

[Video]
[7.25]

Jel Bugle: Angry era Shakira is pretty good! Shakira has always been great. Glad she’s not singing in English, can just enjoy her voice without any baggage of understanding the words. 
[9]

Mark Sinker: The name of a Colombian song and dance-form also known as terapia (therapy), the word champeta “originally denoted a short, curved, monkey-killing knife of the same name used in the region at work, in the kitchen, and as an offensive weapon… ” But if it’s about escaping a tiresome situation, it’s just as much about where you might end up, and the through-line highlight here is really its twinkling soukous guitar.  
[8]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Just as much of a concession to median pop norms as the last time we covered her, but far more successful in that context; you could write a whole & logical musical genealogy explicating why it works for Shakira to lean on afrobeats here, but the truth is that she just sounds looser that she has in perhaps a decade here — it’s not as commanding of a performance as her BZRP session from last year, but she sounds overjoyed to float through the track, weaving between guitar figures and occasional dips into Tainy-core synth moodiness with an trickster-like breeziness that has always been one of her strengths as a performer.
[8]

Tim de Reuse: When you’re Shakira, you get to tell your producers to ignore all trends in the field of pop music production in the last five years; keep it tropical, wide-open, sleek, glassy. I suppose if I was in her producers’ position, I wouldn’t want to put anything between her voice and the audience’s ears anyway. Despite the bureaucracy of the arrangement, there’s at least one distinct Shakiraism in each line of the breathy, twisting chorus: more character than most of her peers manage to put in a whole track’s vocal performance.
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: Learning Alexander Castillo was an acolyte of Max Martin was a shock because this is such a complete cycling through of Latin pop and Afrobeats by someone who is apparently not African (at least not directly by parentage) and who knows how to layer a snare. God bless him. Shakira sounds excellent too.
[10]

Katherine St. Asaph: “Bzrp Music Sessions #53” was just a fluke, wasn’t it?
[4]

Alfred Soto: Compared to the Shakira of yore “Soltera” shows a slight loss of speed but not verve — she still sounds like a potential hook-up, intensified by a couple well-mixed cocktails, is a moment’s monument. 
[7]

Dave Moore: Some strong, down-the-middle pop reggaeton from Shakira, who sounds like she’s having a good time, which is almost but not quite enough to make this stick. It has, however, conveniently reminded me to dust off her album from March to confirm it’s making my top ten this year (it is).
[6]

1 blerg » Monday, November 11th, 2024 6:45 pm

A whole group dedicated to Katherine’s eye! Wait, no…

[Video]
[6.44]

Dave Moore: The bio claims they’re the “first-ever global girl group formed using KPOP artist development methodologies” — and the song follows suit, maximized for a conservative return on investment. 
[4]

Kayla Beardslee: This is just NewJeans in English. It’s fine, if a bit too slight for my tastes, but I’m pleasantly surprised that a K-pop label’s “Western” group has actually gained some traction. I’m sure we can expect many more aggressively decent, radio-ready pop singles from them in the future. 
[5]

Nortey Dowuona: A little surprising that neither Kota Banks, Caroline Ailin nor Taka Perry could think to include any Korean whatsoever. (The song is still very good.)
[7]

Leah Isobel: A dense collection of hooks that moves almost immediately into the realm of the symbolic; the chorus’ stuttering recasts Sky Ferreira’s “One” from an articulation of the fembot’s loneliness to an aspirational demonstration of feminine invulnerability. Despite the delicately sparkling girlypop soundscape, KATSEYE are cool and clinical, efficient, militant. A girl group for our times.
[8]

Jel Bugle: Enjoyable, and I like the repeating words in the chorus, but it doesn’t go quite hard enough for my liking. They’ve all got nice voices — hope they don’t go solo, though.
[7]

Joshua Lu: This perky distillation of R&B stylings into dancepop is perfectly assembled and well-suited for dancing in a 16:9 resolution, but would feel a lot more interesting if HYBE hadn’t already flooded the market with multiple iterations of this same song.
[5]

Ian Mathers: Lots of lovelorn pop has a faintly deranged and/or threatening vibe, and the way Katseye lean into that element in the video here is honestly delightful. The song steadily ticks along (especially that chorus) and goes by so quickly it only enhances the impression of ruthless, possibly sinister efficiency. Even the asides (“oh baby, I was gettin’ bored,” “if I ever call again, don’t press ignore”) make it seem like somebody might be about to get got. I’m here for it.
[9]

Taylor Alatorre: Songs like this give me a better understanding of why girls in high school and college often take notes in that meticulously arranged and color-coordinated style, with the neatly set text boxes and sticky note flags and other stylistic elements that comprise the “studyblr” aesthetic. It’s nice to establish a feeling of order and control within a regimented environment, to follow the rules in a presentably personalized way, asserting more agency than is needed but less than is feared. Katseye perform cuteness because the format demands it, and they have to work twice as hard to achieve that effect as the groups they emulate. “Touch” is suffused with that sense of earnest, slightly frazzled studiousness, and it’s enough to earn my sympathies, even if their end goal is as prosaic as that of the notebook-filling GPA-grubber.
[7]

Katherine St. Asaph: SecondhandJeans.
[6]

1 blerg » Monday, November 11th, 2024 2:32 pm

It all keeps adding up…

[Video]
[6.38]

Alfred Soto: Tyler albums evaporate from my memory a week after praising them, so I’m prepared to do the same for “NOID” and its brethren. The self-production is dense, almost granitic: nobody’s getting in, Tyler included. 
[6]

Taylor Alatorre: I gave “Sicko Mode” a [3] when it first came out due to its disjointed structure and what I saw as its misaimed aspirations to prog-rock complexity; I was wrong, and would give it an [8] today. Maybe I’ll re-evaluate this song similarly some years from now, but I doubt it, given that “Sicko Mode” at least doesn’t wait until halfway through to develop a legible groove.
[4]

Mark Sinker: Spent enough of this autumn past thinking about the structures and decisions of classic mid-’70s prog to know what this is: a focused, quilted and layered mood-sketch of the named mind-state as seen from different angles (including his mom’s and also long-dead sampled Zamrock star Paul Ngozi’s). What it isn’t, I don’t think, is a single. 
[7]

Tim de Reuse: Here we have a tune that’s 50% sound collage by weight, wandering between Zam-rock choruses, heavy-psych guitars throwing their weight around, clips of disembodied voices snapping in and out of existence. The generous reading is that Tyler’s genre-mashing fearlessness has him putting together expansive, kaleidoscopic suites, in a way that none of his peers would dare; the less generous reading is that his penchant for showmanship has swelled up and pushed all else to the periphery. I’m split between the two. I would have been interested to hear more than, like, one and a half verses from the man himself, though.
[6]

Ian Mathers: It’s impressively bold that the video version of this just basically chops off the second half of the song (and a lot of strong material) but keeps all the impressively disjointed opening minute. For that minute I was like “maybe he’s just not going to rap” and was still impressed, but of course he does eventually. Both the full and truncated versions are definitely Making A Statement, the kind of thing that ought to get people interested in checking out Chromokopia. Does it have more Ngozi Family samples, though? Because those work ferociously well here.
[7]

Jel Bugle: Is it super creative, original and out there? Yes, I guess so. Do I want to hear it again? I don’t really think so. I liked the lady singing bits and the wibbly synths, but the rapping was my least favourite part. It’s just a bit too “album of the year” coded.
[5]

Katherine St. Asaph: Craft imitating subject. Like Peter Gabriel’s “Intruder,” this sounds unidentifiably off in the context of its genre, and more so the more details one takes in: faint sirens and clipped voices hiding in the mix but not quite disappearing, percussion like shallow breaths then shallow breaths as percussion. Or maybe it’s like a time-displaced “Yonkers” where the years-old menace has caught back up to the music — which itself is a paranoia symptom.
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: I hope anyone who has listened to and enjoyed this song could purchase a copy of The Ghetto and run through it. You’ll find even more bracing music than the paranoiac fantasies of a Nigerian man who has come into great wealth — which, to be fair, is actually a very good subgenre in both literature and music.
[9]

1 blerg » Monday, November 11th, 2024 1:29 pm

Quadruple threat, I’ve got it all…

[Video]
[5.71]

Alfred Soto: Their voices similar enough that one sounds as if she’s harmonizing with herself, GloRILLA and Sexyy deliver solid boasting with the essential sharpness blunted. Somebody wants a chart crossover. Maybe both.
[7]

Leah Isobel: I prefer Sexyy Redd’s more anarchic tendencies over her relatively toned-down approach here; either she’s moderating herself, or the song is so seamlessly professional that it mostly swallows the absurdity she usually provides. Still, she balances GloRilla’s buttoned-up charisma well, and brings a welcome hint of surface-level chaos to a song that seems otherwise intent on keeping its messiness subtextual.
[4]

Nortey Dowuona: Any flip of “Wipe Me Down” gets a [5] by default. Unfortunately Glo is not adding anything to this, and Sexyy is completely ignorable. Ace Charisma and Lil Ronnie prove that one name is the gospel truth and the other is a lie. Jeremy Allen is that underground legend with the check tho.
[5]

Katherine St. Asaph: The talent gulf between GloRilla and Sexyy Red is so enormous that I don’t know why you’d listen to this and not other Glo.
[4]

Jel Bugle: Could find myself singing “hair, face, ass, titties” at the most inopportune moment — it’s the new “head, shoulders, knees and toes”!
[7]

TA Inskeep: “It’s givin’ hair, face, ass, titties” needs to become the new “my neck, my back, my pussy and my crack.” 
[6]

Ian Mathers: Spent part of Tuesday night chanting “HURR. FACE. AYSS. TIDDIES.” to myself like a thought-terminating mantra to avoid looking at political news from the States.
[7]

no blergs » Friday, November 8th, 2024 5:46 pm

Hard same…

[Video]
[4.12]

Katherine St. Asaph: I wrote this blurb on the morning of November 5 and have not touched it since. The score here reflects my forced optimism that this stolid yet somehow overwrought song will not have become resonant or relatable by the time of publication.
[4]

Alfred Soto: His broad craggy voice a worthwhile instrument for confessionals and empathy, Jelly Roll has trouble finding material up to it. “I Am Not Okay” is just broad enough for shrewdly platformed universalism.
[6]

Will Adams: Jelly Roll’s personal story suggests he could deliver a powerful display of vulnerability and courage; he’s certainly got the voice for it. But all he can muster is “it’s not okay, but it’s gonna be all right,” which is about as impactful as when Jessie J sang “it’s okay not to be okay.”
[3]

Taylor Alatorre: The about-face transition from “It’s not okay” to “it’s all gonna be all right,” without any sketching of how or why, only makes sense if a religious framework is assumed. This assumption is proven correct with the clumsy line about a “holy water tide.” The idea that the last shall be first is a powerful one, but Jelly Roll seems to believe that this conviction alone should be enough to move any listener, even absent any clear musical markers of its intensity or sincerity. 
[4]

Nortey Dowuona: I will ask again: where the FUCK is the Zach Crowell who produced this?
[0]

Mark Sinker: Satan cheerfully tap-tap-tapping until he breaks through: to wit, the only thing I dislike even slightly about this is the way JR spells “Okay.” And that’s a sign that I’m also not OK, and that’s bad, and it’s also bad that this succession of well-delivered generics is working as a kind of hymn for me right now. Wait, succession of generics: that’s what a hymn is, isn’t it?
[7]

Ian Mathers: It’s been a fucking rough week! But I know I could be doing worse, because I’m not so far down that this generic glurge (decent sentiment, extremely offputting singing) is actually reaching me.
[4]

Al Varela: I can acknowledge the person who would listen to this and be inspired to keep going. In fact, I commend them for finding solace in this song and Jelly Roll’s story of persistence and redemption. It’s great to have an artist who can inspire people to break out of the holes that they’re in and live their lives to their fullest. I’m just not that person.
[5]

no blergs » Friday, November 8th, 2024 5:02 pm

Not out of the woods yet…

[Video]
[4.54]

Mark Sinker: I’m not by habit melancholic or nostalgic: if things were so great back in the day whatever brought us to this? Of course the brightest energies and optimism are also often stood on the thinnest crusts of inexperience — we hadn’t seen enough of life to be wary! — but all the same, that’s generally what speaks to me. Except now this, growing out of a pretty wispy-seeming young-love-style story, a 24-year-old singing about how this time things just aren’t going to snap back, and that’s what it is…  Anyway I’ve been playing it on a loop since I first heard it, like I just learned a new lesson. 
[10]

Alfred Soto: The presence of co-writer/co-producer Aaron Dessner and the we’ll-always-have-Paris sentiment suggests the influence of Taylor Swift — not to mention Gracie Adams’ breathy plaintiveness. A lovely thing I don’t want to listen to again.
[5]

Isabel Cole: When I listened to “us.,” Abrams’s collaboration with Taylor Swift, I assumed the reason it sounded so Swiftian was that they had written it together, but “I Love You, I’m Sorry” — a lilting waltz with a motormouthed bridge recounting an August heartbreak — suggests that of all the young women in pop’s freshman cohort who credit Taylor for inspiring them to to pick up a guitar and turn their feelings into hooks, Abrams is the one who has most faithfully studied Taylor’s actual craft. This isn’t all bad if you like Taylor’s thing, as I often do; the melody is sticky, not unpleasantly so, and the bridge does go a little crazy. But Abrams just isn’t enough of a presence to shake off the comparison. As a lyricist, she’s adequate but not distinctive; as a performer, the elegantly layered vocal tracks help her make the most of the thinness of her voice, but she mumbles morosely through the melody in a way that comes across as affected or borrowed from someone else. Still, I’m bumping this a point because it turns out that without the Taylor factor, I’m still a sucker for Peepaw Dessner’s production, which here is thoughtful and spare (I love the violin rising in the second verse); here’s hoping this heralds more pop collaborations beyond the Taylorverse in his future.
[5]

Brad Shoup: We can put Abrams’ debt to Taylor in NFL terms: The Story of Us sees the former as an impatient chairperson, purchasing entire limbs of the Sean McVay coaching tree in an attempt to shortcut success. (In this analogy, Sean commits football treason by freelancing for a few plays.) Like most of Abrams’ album, “I Love You, I’m Sorry” is an Aaron Dessner co-write. (It’s also, until the bridge crashes in, a Sufjan Stevens homage, a sort of “seven” in waltz time.) It’s fun to imagine what he contributed (“and I’ll have a drink,” certainly; “trust me, it’s always about me,” probably) and what he merely applauded (“you mean well but aim low”). In high National style, the settings are specific but the actions aren’t. It’s all rich-kid shit: the Benz is supposed to signify while being “by the gate” isn’t; after barely surviving the future perfect tense, the lover flies away, leaving Abrams to a deckside sunset reverie. The bridge infringes on Swift’s fist-pumping backing vocals, but only to goose some fake breakthrough babble. If you really want to pair adult-contemporary loveliness with wrenching self-sabotaging detail, maybe ditch Aaron for Anna.
[3]

Ian Mathers: Sometimes my blurb is just the thought that wouldn’t stop looping through my head as I listen to the song repeatedly — in this case, “I’m not sure Taylor Swift has been a good influence on people.”
[7]

Leah Isobel: The second verse’s fortunetelling inadvertently crystallizes exactly what I dislike about this post-Taylor style of confessional songwriting. This specific conversational voice relies on a unilateral, unexamined intimacy, as if just saying what is felt is enough to make the speaker sympathetic. There is no space for doubt and very little for actual self-reflection. Like musical theatre, we’re hearing the narrator’s unfiltered emotions, keyed up to such a height that they have to be sung instead of spoken; unlike (good) musical theatre, the simultaneously wimpy and portentous musical choices do not allow these emotions any space to breathe or any room for dignity. That Swiftian reverbed-shout-for-emphasis, ugh; the lilt that thuds right on the downbeat, blech; the scratchy whispery vocal, eyeroll. And sure, the inversion is purposeful, but wallowing in self-pity is not a compelling mode. Go for a walk! Read a scary book! Get a personality!
[3]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I find new things to dislike about this song every time I listen — Aaron Dessner’s dumbly rootsy guitar strums, the miasma of synth pads and softly-cooed backing vocals that envelop the track, and most of all Abrams’ lyric, which is at once highly effortful and lazy as shit. It takes a lot of work to write something that sounds like a stream of consciousness, and she’s done none of it; every tossed-off “same”, every attempt at a witty aside lands completely leaden. It’s a work of Potemkin songcraft, full of lines that imply some deep interiority with nothing at all behind them.
[1]

Taylor Alatorre: There’s a certain irony embedded in the term “cargo cult.” While anthropology has long abandoned it as an inaccurate reflection of the Melanesian religious movements it was created to describe, it remains in common use as a metaphor for the imitation of a practice without a full understanding of its inner workings; in this way, the non-academic persistence of the phrase is a sort of “cargo cult” in itself. I say this in order to avoid being problematic when I label the alternating group vocals in the bridge of this song as pure cargo cult Swiftism. Elsewhere, though, the ritual gets better results: “Trust me, I know it’s always about me” is almost as disarming as it wants to be.
[5]

Iain Mew: Like Coldplay doing Bruce Springsteen, this suffers from too many elements almost lining up with a single source. In this case it’s the way the bridge’s rushing rhythm, crash imagery, and arrangement (with those backing vocals emphasising the end of each line) individually and collectively resemble Taylor Swift’s “Out of the Woods.” Gracie Abrams builds a song with its own momentum in a quite careful and effective way otherwise, but the distraction comes at exactly the worst point, turning what should be the emotional climax into an exercise in distorted recognition.
[4]

Al Varela: I have yet to be convinced that Gracie Abrams is anything more than a Phoebe Bridgers and Taylor Swift tribute act being given a major-label push, and here I’m reminded so strongly of Phoebe’s hushed vocal timbre that it catches me off guard. That said, the storytelling here and how it builds upon one of Gracie’s previous songs, “I Miss You, I’m Sorry,” is what makes me a lot warmer to this than her other singles. She’s genuinely good at fleshing out the details and moments that make this breakup painful even years later. Even if she’s still cribbing the sound, I can still hear her in the songwriting, not someone else, which is a step, at least.
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: Was pleasantly surprised that Audrey Hobert, the director of the genuinely excellent video for this song, also cowrote this! That’s kinda it, I’m sorry.
[0]

Jel Bugle: The vibe is good, the chorus is there often enough, and that’s enough for me. I’m sure Gracie is being too hard on herself.  
[8]

Katherine St. Asaph: What a waste of perfectly good nepotism.
[2]

1 blerg » Friday, November 8th, 2024 4:37 am

We appreciate the invitation, but we’re still hungover from last night.

[Video]
[2.30]

Taylor Alatorre: Maybe I’m primed to dislike this out of annoyance at being lumped in with a semi-imaginary cohort of “Park Slope trust fund kids” between 2015 and 2020, despite spending those years holed up in the Central Time Zone. Or maybe I’d rather just listen to Cobra Starship where the layers of irony are at least partway navigable, and connected to real, material concerns in even the most tenuous of ways. To give a [1] out of pity for the dirty bassline and purloined Duck Sauce would be to aid and comfort the enemy; there be no shelter here, the frontline is everywhere.
[0]

Nortey Dowuona: I guess I’m going to this guy’s party? He can play a mean bass. His snares suck, but apparently folks don’t be knowing they can’t play the snare by hitting it hard like they can with the kick.
[6]

TA Inskeep: James Murphy cannot be happy about this.
[6]

Leah Isobel: This is nothing.
[4]

Jel Bugle: OMG, this is just horrible! Makes the worst excesses of electroclash seem artful. People like this should not actually be allowed to sing. I don’t care if I’m invited, there is no way I am coming to your poxy party. Get a real job!
[2]

Alfred Soto: No, thanks, I gotta cut my toenails. 
[2]

Katherine St. Asaph: I have to say, it’s so much easier to do the necessary inner work of disliking The Dare when he sounds less like electroclash than “Moves Like Jagger.” Also when he opens his mouth.
[1]

Ian Mathers: What was that about “nostalgia waves I hated the first time“? Poor guy, he has exactly the wrong vocal timbre for this stuff.
[2]

Mark Sinker: Harrison Patrick “Turtlenecked” Smith of Dimes Square: genuinely the least appealing voice in all my years reviewing for TSJ. Is this a bit? If it is I don’t get it and what’s more I don’t want to get it. 
[0]

Hannah Jocelyn: Brat summer, in hindsight, felt like the last gasp of cultural joy before the horrors that await us in the coming years. I’ll miss the memes, I’ll miss “Good Luck, Babe”, I’ll miss the “HOT TO GO” dance, I’ll miss I’m working late, cause I’m a singerrrrr.  But holy shit, I will not miss The Dare.
[0]

1 blerg » Thursday, November 7th, 2024 9:00 am